Breaking: DHS Employees Locked Out Of Their Networks

It’s not clear what’s going on, but news is filtering out that employees of the Department Of Homeland Security are locked out of some of the agency’s networks because their Personal Identity Verification cards are apparently not working:

Employees began experiencing problems logging into networks at 5 a.m. ET on Tuesday due to a problem related to the personal identify verification (PIV) cards used by federal workers and contractors to access certain information systems, one source said. At least four DHS buildings were affected, the source said, including locations used by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.

Another source said the cards did not appear to be responsible. DHS did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

This could be a widespread technical issue, or something more sinister.It isn’t clear which at this point. But this is a story worth watching. As I get more info, I’ll post it here.

UPDATE: The Reuters story that I quoted has been updated with this:

In a statement, a DHS official confirmed a network outage that temporarily affected four U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) facilities in the Washington area due to an “expired DHS certificate.”

Reuters first reported the incident earlier Tuesday, which a source familiar with the matter said also affected a USCIS facility in Philadelphia.

And this:

The source characterized the issue as one stemming from relatively benign information technology missteps and a failure to ensure network redundancy. There was no evidence of foul play, the source said, adding that it appeared the domain controller credentials had expired on Monday when offices were closed for the federal Presidents Day holiday.

“We are working to track all device certificate issuance and expirations to ensure future lapses of service do not occur,” the DHS official said in the statement.